The Time Has Finally Arrived . . .

I love movies -- it’s not uncommon for me to see four films a week. But until recently, I preferred to watch most of them in theaters rather than at home. That might seem strange for the publisher of specialty A/V-based online magazines, but I had my reasons.

The first had to do with image quality. While I thought that laserdisc was interesting, I never bought into it. And while I applauded the introduction of DVD in the late 1990s and have owned many DVD players, the format’s image quality was never high enough for me. The 480 lines that make up a DVD image might be adequate for a moderate-sized TV, but they don’t look that good when displayed on a much bigger screen.

That has all changed with the introduction of the high-definition sources HD DVD and Blu-ray, which can provide about six times the resolution of standard-definition DVD and produce a stunning image on a big home hi-def screen. As a result, the image-quality gap between movie and home theaters has so narrowed that you can now get an image at home that’s as good as or better than what you see in even the best theaters.

The second reason that home theater hadn’t bowled me over till now was the cost. While loudspeakers, amplifiers, and surround-sound processors have long been reasonably priced, only recently have the prices of video displays and projectors approached what I call the range of common sense. Not too many years ago, a really good projector cost tens of thousands of dollars -- to my way of thinking, an insane amount of money to spend to watch movies at home, particularly if they’re on SD DVD. But nowadays it’s possible to buy a 1080p projector for $2000 to $3000 that can deliver extraordinary image quality. I use an Epson PowerLite Pro Cinema 1080 UB projector (which I reviewed on SoundStage! V), which, when introduced, cost $4000. Today you can buy it for much less. What’s more, Epson now offers a Home model that offers the same image quality at a substantially lower price than the Pro. And many other options are available from other manufacturers. The point is, today’s video projectors are very affordable.

The last thing that sold me on home theater is that the selection of films is now actually better at home than at theaters. As I write this, the movie multiplex near me is showing 11 films on 12 screens (Hancock, which just opened, is being shown on two screens). Of those 11 titles I’ve already seen two, am interested in seeing two more, and the remaining seven don’t appeal to me at all. It’s much the same at most of the other theaters in town. That’s the way it is with movie theaters today: many theaters showing a few movies, and even fewer good ones.

In contrast, the selection at the retail and rental stores is amazing. Granted, you still can’t rent the very latest films when they’re first released to theaters, but with so few movies actually getting theatrical releases these days, that doesn’t matter much anymore. Far more new movies are being released straight to disc -- far more than open in theaters. And with the film studios’ libraries now so varied and vast, there’s more than a century’s worth of films to choose from. In fact, there’s so much available to rent or buy that you’ll never run out, even if you do nothing but watch movies all day.

With such good video equipment at such reasonable prices, and with the number of titles for rent at an all-time high, the time has finally arrived: Almost everyone can now enjoy first-rate movie watching at home. I used to love going to the movies, but I haven’t been to a theater in over a month -- not since I set up my projector-based home system. I haven’t missed it one bit. In fact, if new films are ever released on disc and to theaters the same day, I might never go back.

. . . Doug Schneider
das@hometheatersound.com

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